Senate Resolution 59, introduced in the United States Senate on February 10, 2017, would, if passed, express the Senate's support of designating February 12, 2017, as Darwin Day, and its recognition of "Charles Darwin as a worthy symbol on which to celebrate the achievements of reason, science, and the advancement of human knowledge."

NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friend of Darwin award for 2017: Edward J. Larson, the Pepperdine University historian and legal scholar who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 book about the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods; Richard E. Lenski, the Michigan State University evolutionary biologist famed for his E. coli Long-Term Experimental Evolution Project; and Daniel J. Phelps, a geologist and unrelenting critic of a young-earth creationist ministry headquartered in his native Kentucky.